Tag Archives: Leonardo Fioravanti

In the Renaissance, diseases frequently took on terrifying aspects. They were dangerous enemies, never to be taken lightly. Even familiar diseases such as leprosy and plague were feared adversaries that had to be combated with every means at hand. Besides such familiar sicknesses, early modern Europe was besieged by a host of new and mysterious […]

[Note: In the course of doing research, historians sometimes come across stories that seem to cry out to be told. Here’s one that I encountered in the Inquisition file in the Venetian State Archive a few years ago. It’s from Archivio di Stato, Venice, Sant’Uffizio, b. 23, containing the trial testimony of Antonio Vulpino, 9 […]

“Is there no balm in Gilead? Is there no physician there?” (Jeremiah 8:22) Jeremiah’s plaintive words express the fundamental lament of the human heart: In times of tragedy and sadness, where is God in this moment? Has He abandoned us? While in the passage from Jeremiah the Balm of Gilead is used as a metaphor about […]

How do charlatans operate? What is the source of their fascination—and their power? Charisma, of course. But what is the source of that charisma? I think that two things are important: First, the claim to possess “secret knowledge”; and second, the claim to have discovered the single cause (or causes) of all diseases. Two examples […]

One of the most enduring myths in the history of medicine is the legend of the French surgeon Ambroise Paré as the “liberator” of surgery from the dangerous practice of cauterizing gunshot wounds with a red-hot iron. Paré himself was the originator of the legend, having published an account of it in his book, Method […]

I have in my collection a book published in 1908 titled The People’s Common Sense Medical Adviser, by “Dr. R. V. Pierce.” It’s a modest little volume that I purchased in a used book store in Madison, Wisconsin some years ago. First published in 1875, the book was tremendously popular in its day, going through […]

Surgery is no art for the squeamish. A simple slice through the skin – the practiced surgeon’s daily experience – may be enough to give an ordinary person nausea. The history of surgery is replete with instances of daring surgical interventions, harrowing battles against blood-gushing wounds, amputations accomplished at lightning speed and without anesthesia, […]

Not so long ago, “alternative medicine”—a heterogeneous mélange of healing practices that includes everything from herbalism to acupuncture—was regarded as nothing more than a relic of medicine’s prescientific past or, worse, a cultish fad. That is hardly the case any longer. Each year, millions of Americans use some form of alternative medicine. In fact, according […]